


Fanatics

by Bryn Lantry (Bryn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1989-01-01
Updated: 1989-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 14:07:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/pseuds/Bryn%20Lantry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Early days on Liberator. The old marooned-on-a-planet plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fanatics

**Author's Note:**

> Printed in the zine 'Before and After' from Merry Men Press, circa 1989  
> Not a bad Blake, though; I like the first half strangely. Far too easy after that, as the story type is.

###  
###

“Why don't you face the truth?” drawled Avon. His sarcastic anger against Blake was heating lazily, the way a cunning cat stalks. “We're stranded in a ruined stone-city on a deserted world. Your crew of riff-raff has abandoned you. You can't make revolutionaries out of criminals, Blake. Apparently they've more sense than I gave them credit for. They've decided that one gallant attack upon the Federation was enough. Or perhaps that alien you salvaged from Saurian Major is to blame. Either way – you and I are marooned here. You asked for it by trusting the ship to their keeping. If you weren't suicidally naive, you'd never have left the flight deck until you'd worked out how to command-lock the computer. That's what I would have done. You deserve being dumped.”

As Avon delivered this tirade, the anger worked into a glorious blaze. He was frustrated, mentally exhausted after nearly a year of jail and grief, and he despaired of hearing from Liberator again. Under the circumstances, anger was a kind of drunkenness, which wouldn't last long enough. He sneered on, “You saved us from one prison planet. Now you've sentenced us to another. There are no ships on this world, Blake, no people. We can rot here unmolested by the human race.”

“I think I prefer that to the petty religious empire on Cygnus,” remarked Blake. Under Avon's ferocity his temper remained whole and deadpan, like a monolith. His honey-coloured eyes ignored Avon, scouting the spoiling corpse of the city from the tower they had climbed. The evening sky was jade, just darkening. “We need a light,” said Blake, and jogged down the stairs to search for one.

Gritting his teeth, Avon prowled the top story of the tower. There were three cage-like rooms, two with rickety but elaborately carved wooden beds. In the third, which alone had windows – or rather, holes to welcome the gusts of wind – hung a half-unravelled tapestry. This was where Blake had decided to camp.

Avon willed Blake to return and renew the fight. There would be an obscure gratification in releasing – like a genie – the fury in Blake. But Blake, with his iron resolution, was never perceptibly daunted by disaster, and likewise he never indulged in aggression unless deliberately, to manipulate. Most fanatics were profligate with the energy of their hatred, or faith, or whatever they named the thing that drove them. Not Blake. For weeks at a time one might forget he was a zealot. Then, out of the blue, he'd slam the whole weight of his emotion into you. Vila had seemed somewhat awed by his tactics on Cygnus Alpha. He said Blake had been flung amongst them, limp from torture, only to stagger up and rave about fighting, with more spirit than a whiskey bar (Vila's phrase) until several forgot the priests' grisly threats and pledged themselves to him.

Revolutionaries, thought Avon in disgust. He didn't know which he mistrusted more – Blake's too-passionate nature, or the efficiency with which he harnessed that nature. Initially, while plotting escape on the London, Avon had seen Blake as level-headed, resourceful, smart and game enough for whatever was necessary. Nothing dangerous in any of that. Meeting this composed man, you tended to overlook the fact that he was the most notorious resistor of the Second Calendar. The truth was, Blake had a heart as dark and hot and mad as any of his kind. Avon had been undeceived in the London's computer room, when Blake revealed his ambitions – and later, when he plunged for Raiker in murderous if futile hatred.

“Hungry?” came Blake's voice, provokingly mild. He had reappeared carrying an enamelled oil lamp that looked as if it would explode when lighted, and bulbous red fruit in his shirt, which he'd knotted into a knapsack.

Avon kept a malignant stare on him as he fiddled with the lamp. He could stare like that forever, particularly at Blake. But the rebel seemed scarcely to notice – just as he'd dismissed the gun Avon had gleefully followed him about the flight deck with weeks ago. _You're a free man_ , Blake had dourly answered the gun, in – contempt? Or just a refusal to be cowed by friend or foe? Avon liked teasing Blake with hostility. Glaring balefully on, however, doubt crossed his mind. What if Blake were truly indifferent to his displays? No – he must be feigning. Blake wasn't contemptuous of him, just stubborn as a Praxian python.

Needing to prove that, no matter how averse they were to each other, he had Blake's respect, Avon padded over to crouch alarmingly near his companion. Blake was neatly trimming the wick with a knife. “You do admit, Blake, that we've been betrayed?”

Blake merely said, “I never jump to conclusions.”

“You mean your pride prevents you. But even you must provide for the possibility.”

“I am providing.” Blake screwed the coloured glass onto the brass lamp. “What are you doing?” He gave Avon a short look of censure for his idleness – an impersonal look, from captain to crewmember.

“Planning how to provide. Your fruit won't sustain our strength.” Impertinently, Avon raked his gaze down Blake's shirtless torso. “At least you're plump.”

Blake slightly lifted an eyebrow. Then he caught Avon's devilish, yet clinical smile, and understood that he wasn't referring to how Blake's flesh reserves might benefit Blake.

That, finally, irked Blake beyond the power of concealment. The lips came away from his teeth in an expression of repugnance.

Avon continued nonchalantly. “I'm simply being a realist, Blake. You've heard the stories about survivors of spaceship crashes. When they must, they eat each other.” In dark mockery, he asked, “Am I frightening you?”

“Cannibals don't frighten me,” Blake said, unmistakably sincere. “They disgust me.” Recoiling from Avon's proximity, he took his lamp to a window, to work in the remains of the light.

Avon was amused, and puzzled. Blake struck a flint with all the sullen rancour with which he once eyed the guard who confined him in his launch seat for insisting on medicine for that feverish prisoner, Paura. Surely no terrorist's sensibilities were that dainty. Yet, not only had Avon roused the sleeping genie, but the genie proved recalcitrant about laying down again. There he hung as a tawny glow in Blake's eyes – which avoided Avon, but nonetheless seemed to accuse him of some unnamed perfidy.

Before Avon could conjecture which of Blake's mysterious feelings he had trampled upon, the broody storm was over and equanimity returned to Blake's face and manner. Well now, that was fascinating, Avon thought, but not very enlightening. Except he was newly confident that Blake didn't scorn his potential for enmity. Indeed, he'd disturbed Blake rather more than he'd calculated.

The gas lamp sputtered, then, under Blake's nursing, flared. Through the enamelling the light shone in snaking gold and rose. Coming to lean his hip on the window ledge, Avon criticised, “A bit gaudy, Blake.”

“Atmospheric, Avon.” Blake looked up. Satiric and curious, Avon locked their gazes. But Blake refused to be bullied into embarrassment about his tantrum. On the contrary, a subtle conspiracy of humour lurked in his face.

That dragged a laugh from Avon. Though the laugh was sharp and snarling, coming from some unknown mine of deranged mirth, there was no derision in it. He was laughing _with_ Blake, not at him.

But Blake's smile emerged no further. He ordered, “Go eat your fruit.”

Avon could almost hear the misgivings with which Blake watched his white teeth. He needed no telepathy to be acquainted with Blake's more pessimistic speculations. Hadn't the rebel been born a fine judge of character? There were times Blake thought such phrases as _sinister viper_ , _cold-blooded berserker_ – Avon would swear to it. He'd never worked out whether Blake believed he would have given the London's crew the means to murder their human cargo. So he shut those white teeth, after agreeing, “Anything you say,” and left like an obedient officer.

Only he didn't. Before, dusk had disguised Blake's half-nakedness – now he gleamed in the lamplight. Going past, Avon glimpsed a dark blemish in the pearliness of skin. Not liking that, he stopped to look again.

Blemish? Hell, there were gouges, several of them, seemingly burnt into Blake's flank. A cold sweat dumped itself like a heavy ocean wave. The ugly scorch marks exerted some dreadful mesmerising power. There was something sickeningly unnatural, abhorrent about them. But he was no virgin to the sight of abuse – why did his very body react so extremely? His skin was clammy, he even felt giddy. His throat wanted to gasp to ease the pressure of strangled breath.

“Anything wrong?” asked Blake levelly.

The symptoms were fading. A simple shock reaction, thought Avon. “They look recent,” he observed, no differently to how he would comment upon the weather. He met Blake's eyes blandly, thinking they might be easier to face than the dark pits.

Blake was matter-of-fact. “Vargas wanted the ship,” he reminded as though that explained everything, and carried the lamp to the three-and-a-half legged table. Retrieving his shirt from the pile of fruit, he hid his scars. Then, as if giving in to a wicked temptation, he slanted a decidedly quirky glance at Avon. “I've never undergone the medieval style of torture before.”

Avon considered that the most ghastly attempt at humour he'd been subjected to for a long while. In fact, he thought he might go and hit Blake for it, unless he unburdened himself of his emotion another way. Viciously, he seethed, “Vargas died too quickly.”

There, he demanded of himself – what had he given away now? What did this rash behaviour mean? Since when were you so unwise, Kerr Avon?

The other man said nothing whatsoever. Groping at random for a piece of fruit, he engaged himself in slicing it, either not minding or not noticing that the blade was smeared with lamp-oil. I've confounded him, thought Avon. He can't make sense of me.

As long as Avon looked in Blake's general direction, a hammering insistence upon vengeance, vengeance obliterated any sense there was left in his skull. So he swivelled to the window. That didn't cure the peculiarity of his mental state, but the fury subsided somewhat. At least, the fury against Vargas. He could still personally draw and quarter Blake in fine style for reckless endangerment.

Avon stood there ranting libellously to himself about their beloved leader's uncanny knack for getting himself into trouble. Until a memory interrupted. He saw Jenna and himself salivating over jewels in the teleport room, heard his own cold suggestiveness – “What about Blake?”

Did that happen while thugs were sticking hot irons into Blake?

Avon studied his two hands on the window ledge. Certainly, he would have stranded Blake... just as, five weeks later, Jenna had followed his suggestion – although, rather unfortunately, in his absence. He grimaced ironically at that. And if he'd known they were sticking hot irons into Blake, would that have changed anything? Five weeks ago, would he have been fit to sever Vargas's throat with a blunt nail clipper? Difficult to imagine it, back then.

Five weeks wasn't long. What had happened in the meantime? He'd regaled Blake with a few more assorted insults; he'd almost teleported Blake to his death by suffocation; he'd become an instant trick pilot to get Blake to oxygen; he'd committed his first terrorist atrocity at the instigation of Blake. None of which were reason for him to care what holes Blake acquired in his smooth sides.

“The fruit's not bad,” Blake said, with a probing inflection that automatically made Avon stiffen.

Stop guessing what's going on within me, he snapped mentally. You'll always get it wrong, my Blake. He smiled. If the two of them were damned for thirty odd years to this ruin of a planet, he had an indisputable right to while away the time playing with Blake.

Walking near to the wall, he circled behind and stealthily approached Blake's stool. The hands he'd been studying fell upon the wide shoulders, like a vulture's claws.

Blake schooled his flinch admirably.

“Well then,” grinned Avon, “I believe we've appalled one another once each this evening.”

“I would have thought you had a strong stomach, Avon.”

Oh, you would have found out exactly how strong, Avon thought, if you'd left that animal for me. I would have choked him on his own balls for presuming to maltreat you at the same time as I was selling you for jewels. Speaking of which, it was a bad oversight not to pocket a few whenever I left the ship...

Postponing that financial regret, Avon stared down into the woven gloom of Blake's hair. The anger was going again. That was the drawback of anger – unreliability. Here he was in the predicament of still holding Blake after his anger had fled. And even his playfulness. He found himself asking, queerly, “Why, Blake, how many other styles have you undergone?”

“Healthier not to dwell on such things.”

“Who's healthy?”

Blake gave a low laugh, which ended hollowly.

Leaning further over, Avon frowned under the battering of a different wave, which was no less salty than the previous wave of horror. This one tried to sweep him down to embrace Blake. But what for? He understood nothing. He just wanted to fend torturers away from this grimly brave idiot. If he had access to Zen, he would broadcast a challenge to all Federation personnel – dare to touch Roj Blake and suffer the consequences. Perhaps on this world, no trooper would lay a hand on him. Looking at his own hands laying on Blake's shirt, he nearly lifted one, to illustrate the thing he would permit no trooper to do, to touch the skin of the bare neck.

Just in time, he kicked the impulse in the gut. Standing upright, he said equably, “Goodnight, Blake,” and walked into one of the small bedrooms.

#

Several hours later, Avon unfastened the door, noiselessly. Wind whistled through the windows, hitting his nakedness harshly. Intent on other things, he spared the climate only a cursory grimace. Edging through the dark to the table, he located the lamp and bullied a slight glow from the smelly thing. Just enough to colour the stone gold and rose, and to see that the heavy wood door to Blake's bedroom hung wide open. That was convenient, since his fingers were stiff from the cold. Avon thought of where he could stick them to thaw.

The more he'd reflected upon this idea, over the last several hours, the more sound it seemed. Why not? Blake wasn't bad. As for the rebel's attitude, anyone, with the possible exception of Blake himself, could tell he was sex-starved. Whether he knew it or not, Blake generated all the greedy emptiness of a black hole. On this planet, fortuitously, there was damn little choice, unless one was into wildlife. Blake ought to be a pushover. And Avon intended to push him over and hold him down, if need be.

Brown trousers and shirt were strewn none too neatly at the foot of the bed. Good, thought Avon, nothing to fight through but his obstinacy. His smiling eyes roved over the quilt, noting where a hip jutted and a leg twisted. Funny how, after petite Anna, he should go for Blake's prodigality of build. From a socialite to a guerrilla.

Blake's chin was high, the quilt exposing the thick curve of his throat. Sleepers were in the power of the waking. This was the real, malleable Blake, whom he could make his. Avon surveyed flared nostrils, a shine of teeth, fleshy, tender lips. He'd made the right choice. Having looked, he couldn't brook retreat. Blake would have to co-operate.

Avon planted his hands on the pillow, caging the sleeper between. Gently, he blew under the lifted chin.

Jerking awake, Blake came close to striking out. Recognising who it was, he changed attack into a rueful look. Rueful became mistrustful as he gathered wits.

Avon then inquired, “Do you like men?”

The question seemed meaningless. Eventually, Blake just asked, “What?”

Enjoying his disbelief, Avon strove not to sound too nefarious as he repeated, “Do you like men?”

“Sexually?”

“No, Blake, for dinner.”

Trapped as he was by two bare arms, Blake managed an expression of stony warning. He complained, “Did you wake me up to ask about my proclivities?”

“No,” answered Avon, and dove for Blake's throat.

The hunted fugitive in Blake was still interpreting the situation as a threat. Instinctively, he grasped Avon in a combat hold, with strength enough to crack him against the wall.

Patience, my big fanatic, thought Avon, and he began to kiss slowly down the length of his windpipe.

After two or three inches of his throat were damp from kisses, Blake relaxed his fighter's tackle. His chin tilted further back. You like that, don't you? thought Avon. Reaching the hollow between his collar bones, he played his tongue there, enthralled by the throb of blood just under the soft skin.

Blake uttered a velvety sound that rang in Avon's ears and, despite the cold, sent the blood surging to his cock. Abruptly, sex seemed a matter of life or death. He hadn't counted on lust seizing him quite this way, like a blind but tyrannic giant. Ripping away the quilt, he fastened upon a nipple, and while pulling wetly at it he climbed into the bed to exact friction, of any kind, for his rigid cock from the hot, smooth man there.

A fist wrapped him in beautiful tightness. Avon suspected he exclaimed something, but his thoughts were too disconnected to tell. Propping his weight on Blake's shoulders, he only knew that two supple hands of generous proportion were chafing him against an organ made of silk and heat, similarly generous. No longer under his own power, his hips imitated Blake's heaving rhythm, and he dimly watched the muscle-play in the arms and loins of the man he straddled.

When he came he fiercely kept vision enough to watch his milk spurt over Blake's cock. A picture for his scrapbook. A man could go mad from such pictures. Damned if he'd seen the like. Going mad already. He oughtn't to moan like that. As if hit by the broad side of a pursuit ship. Why not? Blake was the broad side of a pursuit ship. He was smashed flat. Devilish sweet, too. Devilish, devilish sweet.

“Glad you thought so,” came a whisper, mellow like old wine and strange to him. Piece by piece, Avon registered the information that he was sprawled flat on his back, gazing up into eyes, also unfamiliar, which the lamplight made lion-coloured under their heavy black brows. Blake so close and naked was another being altogether. Avon felt like a pioneer in unmapped territory. Well now, he wondered, where shall I explore next? I think the south pole again. Mustering the energy for a grin, he told Blake, “You're not bad.”

The enigmatic lion-eyed man smiled fractionally. “And you?”

“Ah.” Deliberately, Avon lifted one of his knees, dragging his foot over the muscle and rough hair of Blake's calf. He promised, “I'm not bad, either.”

Blake fondled the knee, then pushed it slightly aside, questioning.

Reluctant to take a hint? thought Avon. Let's see – you can't believe your luck, or that particular activity isn't your style? If there's one thing I missed with Anna... but then, there are extremely few men in the galaxy for whom I'd lift my knees. And you, Roj Blake, happen to be amongst the number.

“Shy, Blake?” Avon asked.

“I was thinking.”

Seeing by the heavy rise and fall of Blake's chest that there was no danger of refusal, Avon gripped his shoulders tightly in preparation. “Stick to action, it's what you're good at.”

Blake chewed his lip, then confided with something strangely akin to affection, “You have to be the most baffling man I've ever met.”

“As a matter of fact, I frequently think the like about you. Understanding, however, is not a prerequisite for enjoying. If you're finished with the dicussion?” Avon snaked a leg around the arching rump.

Blake's gaze darkened. He dug his fingers into Avon's hair and kissed him. I never thought to do that, realised Avon, jaw muscles stretching in the effort to answer Blake's hard hunger. Under his leg, he felt Blake's hips shift, and a hand groped for his other knee again, shoving it wide. Heart hammering, Avon scrabbled at Blake's ribs, in acute conflict about whether to pull him in or push him away. Then his fingers bumped against a scab, and recoiled quickly, afraid of hurting Blake. He'd come with precisely the opposite intention. The scabs were why he was here. Yes, he thought – just as Blake breached his muscular resistance.

Pleasure swarmed up through his body, thieving his mind from him. His fists were snatching air, his hips rising for more penetration. Kneeling over him, Blake rasped his name once and thrust swiftly, restraining Avon's thighs, which trembled fitfully.

The thing was short, although while it lasted Avon could have sworn it would be never-ending. That invasion of delight drove deeper yet and stopped there. Soon Avon was futilely twisting, unable to support the hushed moment of extremity. Then Blake cried as if in injured triumph.

A sensual daze settled like a fog over Avon. His brain didn't even attempt to assert itself. There was a pleasing weight on his chest, more heaviness draped over his thighs, and for some reason that meant everything was fine. Avon's sole thought before he drifted right away was, not bad, did I say? I amend that to glorious.

#

Coldness nagged him awake. Dismayed at the prospect of sunlight, Avon jerked the quilt over his face and rolled in the narrow bed, muttering waspishly.

Something was different about this morning. Well, he was on a planet. No, more than that, something more elemental had changed since yesterday morning.

A ghostly picture of the night's doings came. Blake, he thought, enlightened. I just made love with a lunatic. I mean I screwed with one. Why in the stars did I do that? What a way to break my sexual fast. Being marooned has curdled my judgement.

The door had been shut, but industrious noises leaked in from beyond. Of all the creatures in the known or the unknown universe, Avon asked himself, was it necessary to pick Blake? And how improvident to leave his damn clothes in the other bedroom. Avon levered himself onto an elbow. No, there they were – his deep brown poloneck and trousers hung over the bedstead. How domestic of Blake, he thought savagely and irrationally. You'd think we got married last night. Overwhelmed by an agitation which he couldn't even name, Avon kicked the clothes to the floor. So, Blake had taken care to avoid seeing him naked this morning – was that prudery or prudence?

Jumping from Blake's bed as though it might bite, he tugged on the clothes. Anna was still unavenged, while he passed a forgetful night in the arms of a revolutionary. He'd never have thought lust was that important to himself.

Standing in the empty room, Avon's mood went so cold that it seemed to scald. When the choice between the company of his own brooding and the company of Blake became no choice whatsoever, he crashed open the door.

Blake rose at the dramatic entrance, his stance easy, hands on hips. His curls were a crazy black thicket, his shirtsleeves were rolled to expose his handsome, pale arms. Avon wrested away his eyes. An arm was an arm – there was nothing extraordinary about Blake's.

Neutrally, Blake asked, “Awake?”

“Obviously.”

At Blake's feet a fire crackled, in an iron grate which had materialised since yesterday. Three spits toasted chunks of pungent meat. The warmth and the smell were enticing, but Avon maintained his distance. Blake must have woken extremely early, to have conjured this up. His bed too crowded for him? wondered Avon sarcastically.

Blake broke his silence. “Since fruit was good enough, I found more substantial provisions. Hungry yet?”

“Sick with it,” he replied automatically.

Inspecting the spits, Blake chose one for him. “You haven't eaten since we arrived. Go easy, the meat's rich.” He offered the spit with a damnably charming smile.

Ah, this is how he's going to play it, thought Avon. Casual, but familiar, as though we know one another more intimately now. Revolutionaries I dislike, smug revolutionaries I hate. Avon snatched the food. “Thank you, I can dispense with your advise on my physical maintenance.”

That slapped away the smile. Avon kept a sly but diligent watch on him. A knot of rage was tightening in Blake – Avon could sense it, like an empath. Apparently he was learning to read Blake's body language. Then again, the man's mood often radiated like a particle field.

So he wasn't fooled by the blandness with which Blake remarked, “Far be it from me to assist in your physical maintenance.”

Avon whirled suspiciously. Was there a bitter innuendo in that? Would Blake dare?

Impossibly black eyes met him stare for stare. Expert though Avon was, Blake generally won their glaring matches. Blake's will could be as ruthless as a battering-ram, whereas Avon made the mistake of thinking too much.

However, Blake quickly thought better of his challenge, or accusation, or whatever it was. Giving up the contest, he raised his hands in a dismissive, peaceable gesture. A wry smile played over his face.

Avon suspected the smile was only there to ward off a less resigned kind of emotion. After all, his own customary expression of anguish was a grin. Probably Blake too is wondering what possessed him to sleep with a lunatic, he thought.

Was he as unbalanced as Blake? Quite possibly. For example, the simple sight of Blake poking his fire with a stick was producing no very sane turmoil in him. The meat was stringy between his teeth, but Avon barely noticed he was eating as he watched. There was a dreadfully sensual quality to those thick lines of the crouching Blake, to his fleshy but muscular frame. Naturally that was an illusion, a hangover from last night. Never before had Blake appeared like that, spilling over with an erotic beauty.

Avon refused to be snared by the absurd fancies of his own libido. Somewhat desperately, he announced, “In fact, I rather think I can dispense with your input into the events of my life. Now that your negligence has gotten us stranded --”

Blake interrupted. “Nobody would he stranded had you informed me about command-locking the computer earlier than yesterday. But perhaps you were saving that little trick for yourself. Perhaps Jenna pre-empted your own plans for stealing the ship.”

“Discerning of you, Blake.” The charge was true, and Avon wasn't in the least ashamed. One can't betray someone to whom one had no loyalty in the first place. “Quite correct. I never did intend to be one of your followers. I made no secret of the fact. And now you have no ship for me to steal, there's no reason for me to continue in your company. I prefer to shift for myself here. We can live in separate ruined cities. You're welcome to this one; I shall depart this afternoon to find another.” He explained flippantly, “I hate crowds.”

Listening, Blake gazed into the flames where their breakfast was charring. His broad shoulders hunched defensively against the speech, reminding Avon of a baited bear. When Avon ended he squeezed hard at his temples, head hanging, until Avon thought he might hide his face there in his hands. But he dropped the hands in weariness. Flatly, he said, “Don't be more objectionable than you can help, Avon. We stick together down here.”

Avon saw he'd actually managed to bruise the other in the region of that great big bleeding heart of his, around which he generally put up a deflector shield when Avon was in the vicinity. _This_ was the real Blake – not the gruff commander of yesterday, maybe not even the hungry stranger of last night. This was Blake, with his dark-honey eyes haunted by some ghastly spectre of disappointment, and afraid of looking at Avon.

To investigate this man further, Avon continued with the objectionable truths. “You're still playing despot, after you've lost your crew. Don't try and rule me, Blake.”

With two huge strides the larger man lunged, grabbing Avon's shirt and slamming his shoulderblades into the wall. Lungs pumping for air, Avon raised his eyebrows at the glowering, vehement face that almost bumped noses with him.

“We stick together,” Blake said in a passionate growl. “That's the only rule I have down here. It's non-negotiable, and you'll follow it.” Then he eased his clenched fingers, and Avon found his feet again.

The fists weren't necessary, for Blake's glare was enough, and that showed no sign of relenting.

Blake's savagery brought his own savagery to the boil. “I believe I am better equipped for survival than you are,” Avon observed. “And I mean to conserve my survival characteristics --” here he showed his teeth, remembering Blake's first recruitment of him – “for myself, not expend them on two. We'll see who lives longest.”

“You're a perverse bastard, Kerr,” answered Blake, for all the galaxy as if he hated him. Avon realised then that he'd picked the threat most terrible to Blake, who would never make a misanthropist. The prospect of isolation for life demoralised Blake, if anything ever did. No, he wouldn't last well, alone in the decay of an alien culture. Blake needed a purpose, or failing that, a fellow living creature to forage for and eat with.

“I try,” agreed Avon sardonically, knowing now his bargaining power.

Chuckling, Blake stabbed a finger. “You fail. I'm tired of your bluffs. Of your lies. Lie to yourself if you must; not to me.”

Avon was outraged at the suggestion. Damn Blake – he was serious about every objectionable thing he said. “I've lied to you only once,” he hissed. “And that was in deed.” He scowled ferociously until Blake understood the reference.

“I see.” Blake ran a hand through his curls. “At least you're no longer pretending it never happened.”

“Indeed it happened, Blake. It was one of more extravagant errors. You're a civilized man. Perhaps you'll be so good as to not mention the matter again.” He'd never dreamed of naming Anna to anyone. But he had to prove last night was nothing. “The only person I'm interested in making love to is dead. Understood, Blake?”

That dissipated the last of Blake's anger. He paced slowly, and Avon thought, he respects grief. He won't trespass there – he might even forgive my behaviour, now I've revealed the thing that hurts most.

“I see,” Blake repeated, gently enough. “If it was a mistake, naturally I won't mention it. But, Avon,” he pointed a finger again, from under a chin. “How about you understand this. Don't commit any more errors at my expense. Despise me frankly if despise me you must. I dislike feigned feeling. I dislike it very much. I depend upon your courtesy, too, Avon. With that agreement, we can survive here.”

Then Blake left, picking up a spade he'd salvaged and going downstairs. My courteous fanatic, thought Avon when he was alone. He's sorry for me.

Even though I've rarely lied as exorbitantly as I have this morning.

From out of the blue that recognition struck. Those plans to split up, that derision which he had heaped so earnestly upon Blake's handsome head – lies and more lies, every word. Find his own city so Blake and he could sulk in separate ruins? Avon had never heard a more ridiculous idea. What had possessed him?

Laying down his spit, which he appeared to have clung onto throughout the conversation – as a weapon in case Blake got amorous, he supposed – Avon wandered to the bedroom. There he leaned on the high wooden foot of the bed where Blake had... well, there was no putting _that_ into words. He had, anyway, and somehow more marvellously than anyone else. Odd, that they'd suited one another perfectly in bed. Or perhaps not odd. Perhaps, far from being mutually baffled, they understood one another's nature only too instinctively. Of course they disguised the fact. It was an alarming thing, to understand a fanatic from the first meeting of the eyes – which had happened as Blake probed suggestively about altering the London's running log. Obviously Blake had him figured out at that early stage, after about thirty words of conversation. As for himself, the mere sight and reputation of Blake had addicted his curiosity. Hadn't he called himself to Blake's attention the minute the man was freed from his launch chair? Hadn't he enjoyed keeping Blake in a state of suspense for the next four months about whether Avon would join his escape party?

Studying the bed, Avon began to re-interpret the history of their acquaintance. He thought about monomanic, war-torn, passionate, susceptible, civilized Blake, and said to himself, naturally I'm in love with him.

For two hours or thereabouts Avon mulled that phrase over in his mind. Certainly he loved the width of Blake's chest, his thick, expressive eyebrows, the timbre of his voice and the inimitable way he smiled. As for Blake's mind, or soul – if anyone has a soul, Blake has – Avon couldn't remember feeling such antagonism or such fascination for anyone, and he ought to have known what that augured.

Impatient for the next encounter, Avon followed Blake down the stairs. Since he was making with the spade, he was easy to track. On the ground floor of their tower was a pile of rubble, underneath which was something Blake apparently thought worth digging out. Avon declined to inquire what it may be. In a particularly lazy posture he reclined against the wall and seemed to derive entertainment from Blake's exertions.

Foot pausing in the act of pushing in his spade, Blake peered from under bedraggled curls. His shirt was equally dusty and sweaty. “Somehow I doubt you're here to help with the work,” he said.

“I'm quite content to watch.”

“If you claim to be better equipped for survival than I am, Avon, sooner or later I might require some evidence of the fact.”

“You shall have your evidence, Blake. Have you, for example, postulated how to rig an energy field from the regenerating power of our guns to catch game in our absence, so you won't have to chase it through the undergrowth?”

“Can't say that I have.”

Avon nodded smoothly. “Well then. You're fortunate to have me.”

“I'm sure I'll be impressed.”

“So am I.” Avon's dark, amused eyes stayed intent on Blake as he shovelled. “Am I distracting you?”

Blake stopped work again. “You mean you want to.” He plunged his spade upright in the rubble, and brushed his hands off on his trousers. “What is it, Avon?”

“Do you honestly calculate our survival chances to improve if we remain together? I'm not being objectionable, I am merely asking for information.”

For a while Blake looked quizzical, but then he fingered his chin, as he did when musing. “I do,” he replied. “However, I'm not considering the question objectively.”

“No? In what way are you unobjective?”

Orange sun dappled the pavement, and Blake's shoulders. Beyond the archway with its rotting gate, the sky was green and glowing. Blake said, “You're the loner kind, Avon. I'm just the lonely kind.”

“It's a lonely planet.”

Blake snorted. “It's a lonely universe.”

“Meaning?” Avon cocked his head.

One hand gripping his spade, the other on his hip, Blake looked steadfastly. “Meaning I've been lonely for longer than one and a half days. It would be churlish of me to bully you into answering my loneliness. Possibly I was doing a bit of that this morning. But I've been pushing you for longer than one and a half days.” He shrugged. “I don't know why I picked on you.”

“Because I'm as mad as you are.” Gliding forward, Avon snatched Blake's head between gentle hands and was kissing him before Blake knew what was happening.

The kiss was sweeter than before, because he'd acknowledged that this man meant more or less everything to him. Avon had only loved twice – for he had high standards in defining the word. The odd chance that the second time had come hard on the heels of the first had worsened his confusion. But finally he'd got it right. Probably for many weeks he'd wanted to kiss Blake, not insult him. A hot tenderness raged as he caressed Blake's mouth with his own. On this planet, Blake would be wholly his, and he would keep Blake alive if it cost his last drop of blood. No trooper would dare hurt his revolutionary, nor would the wildlife, nor would fate.

His arms were ripped from their stranglehold about Blake's neck. “Please, no,” Blake whispered in distress. “Avon, I asked you not to.”

“Why?” Avon asked.

“Is emotional vivisection your new hobby? I'm no cold fish like you.”

“I know. You've been lonely all along.”

“You have to stop this.”

“Why?”

“Hell, Avon. Did you never consider you can make me fall in love with you? I'm only human, you can't ignore the fact safely forever.”

“Ah. Might you fall in love – with me?”

Blake merely looked stricken.

Avon said, “You asked me not to make any more mistakes, Blake. The truth is that everything has been a lie, until I pitied you for once instead of mistrusting you. We've a planet to ourselves, Blake. Everything I care about is here. To be precise, you and I.” He watched Blake ardently. “We can stop squabbling.”

“Avon.” Blake's fingers clenched and unclenched in his curls. “Avon, you're the most beautiful man I ever saw. I always noticed that. I also noticed you were never gentle. Once I was a gentle man, Avon.”

“Once you were tranquilised.”

“True,” Blake laughed. “I can't imagine you tranquilised. My wolfish amoralist. I think I fell for that in you first. Your wolfishness. Which put me in a muddle.”

“Well, naturally. I am angry and violent and vindictive. You are angry and violent and obsessive. I feared those things about you, but I never blamed them.”

“Are you still afraid of me?”

“It's like a bomb. The closer you get, the less it will hurt. Best course of action to take is to embrace the thing.” Ghoulishly, Avon smiled. “Insanity like yours is only disturbing when one isn't intimate enough to understand.”

“You think I'm insane, Avon?”

“I don't particularly care.” He glanced at the spade. “Why don't you leave the scrap-collecting, Blake? I wouldn't like you to exhaust yourself.” Then Avon lifted a considering eyebrow. “I lie again. I would indeed like you to exhaust yourself.”

Blake watched a hand insinuate itself into his shirt. “Promise not to abuse me afterwards?”

“I shall abuse you in as many ways as I can invent. But I promise it won't be objectionable.”

“It's not yet noon.”

“The perfect time.”

“I reek of sweat.”

“I like your sweat.” Avon thumb crawled up his sternum.

“Gods, Avon. I've needed you desperately all morning.” Blake wrapped him in a greedy hug, groping for Avon's chest and rump and hair all at once, crumpling his clothes.

“Patience, my fanatic.” His gaze warm and ever so slightly smug, Avon removed himself from this molestation. Lacing his fingers meticulously with Blake's, he led his new love upstairs.

#

Avon drowsed, semi-dreaming of the man whose toasty-warm skin stuck to him down their ribs and bellies and locked legs. With his toes he desultorily stroked Blake's ankle, and with his fingers the nape of his neck, liking the sensation of fondling him from one end to the other. Soon he might tug on a stray curl to alert Blake, and propose that he stop lazing around and get back to work – upon Avon's extremities. Blake had the most amazing mouth, and not just for kissing. In the meantime, nothing was more sybaritic for flesh and mind than this utter togetherness, Blake's every limb clasping him as close as possible, Avon's eyelids and lips pressing against the delicate livingness of skin.

Rolling Avon down to the mattress, Blake lifted his head.

“What, Roj?” he muttered.

“Quietly. Company.”

Avon jerked to attention. Stealthy and quick, Blake was out of bed and fetching their guns. The light was mellow with approaching dusk. Barefoot as they were, they padded into the central room. Scuffling came from the level below. They positioned themselves on either side of the stairs.

Three minutes later, Vila emerged to find two guns poking his ribcage, trained by stark naked, stubbly-jawed, familiar figures. “Hi. Fancy meeting you.”

“Vila.” Blake tossed away his gun.

Avon said, “Fancy,” and kept his weapon squarely on their crewmate.

Blake glanced across at him, but not in disapproval. Easing himself down onto a bench, Blake fingered his chin and asked conversationally, “And what might bring you here, Vila?”

That was sometimes Blake's way of being furious. Avon smiled, and looked at Vila as if in expectation of a good story.

“It was Cally's fault,” hurried out the thief. “She sabotaged the ship. We were far out of orbit and running blind before we knew anything was wrong. There was no means of warning you, and navigation was dead.”

“I told you that alien might be responsible,” snarled Avon.

Blake said calmly, “ _Why_ did Cally sabotage the ship?”

“Those aliens. They hijacked her mind, or that's what Jenna says. To lure us to their planet. Then we got trapped in this funny web thing. Jenna had to negotiate – they were only after power cells. When they released us, we raced back to these coordinates – Jenna ordered standard by ten. It was a bumpy ride.”

“Sounds like a tall tale to me,” commented Avon.

“Ask Jenna. She's down here searching too.”

Blake considered Vila a moment longer, before smiling affably. “We ought to get dressed, then.”

You ought, at least, thought Avon in ready jealousy. Before our smuggler spies what belongs to me. Finally he relieved Vila's ribs of his gun barrel, to draw on the trousers Blake carried over.

“We couldn't make teleport contact,” Vila went on. “And you weren't answering your communicators. We've been tracking heat readings here, there and everywhere. Ran into all kinds of hot things that weren't you.”

“Well now, we discarded our bracelets in disgust,” said Avon. “We thought we wouldn't be needing them.” Which was doing an injustice to faithful Blake, who'd simply removed his downstairs while digging and forgotten it.

“Did Liberator sustain much damage?” Blake was asking.

“There's a right mess in the detector linkages for Avon to fix, if Zen hasn't got around to it yet.”

“Vila,” said Avon abruptly. “Might Blake and I have a moment alone?”

That request disconcerted the thief, until Blake gave him an everything's-fine smile. When Vila had made himself scarce, his suspicion faculty obviously on line, Blake from his bench extended a welcoming arm.

Avon went, and the arm looped his waist, as snugly as a ball in its socket. He looked down into questioning eyes, beautifully sloped, more expressive now to his perception than any human eyes.

“Well, my Kerr? Aren't you glad I have a ship again for you to covet?”

“As a matter of fact, not entirely.”

Blake nodded once. “I was enjoying being marooned too. But returning won't cancel anything of what's happened here.”

A ghost of Avon's old anger came to trouble. “Don't be more naive than you can help, Blake.”

“On Liberator, I grant you, there'll be more for us to fight over.” Blake's tone stayed mild, and his arm stayed possessive. “Yet I rarely change my mind.”

“I've noticed.”

“And on the subject of you, Kerr, I never will.”

Softly, Avon pulled a coil of hair at Blake's neck. “You were right,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“They didn't betray you.”

“No.”

“On Cygnus Alpha, I nearly did.”

“I guessed that was why there was a teleport delay.”

“Here you would have been relatively safe,” frowned Avon. “You'll get yourself killed, my crusader.”

“I think you'll prevent that.”

“You can bet your life on it. And I imagine you will – frequently.”

Blake gave the kind of grin that was just for him. “I love you.”

“A propitious coincidence,” answered Avon.

“When the revolution's, you and I will strand ourselves on a wild world and tell no-one the co-ordinates.”

“I see. When the revolution's over.” Avon's irony sounded resigned.

A polite cough from Vila was aimed upstairs. They heard the smart tread of boots, unmistakably Jenna's. Avon gave up his station beside Blake.

“Leaving me?” Blake asked, cocking an eyebrow.

So Avon, cocking an eyebrow in return, settled again into Blake's arm, and crossed his own arms as though defying anyone to think it wasn't his proper place. He thought himself wicked, confronting Jenna thus. Jenna who'd heard him several times over the past weeks scheme, seriously or otherwise, to get rid of Blake. Considering everything, he found the fact that Blake was game to own him publicly, curiously flattering. When Blake did a thing, he did it in earnest.

At the sight of them Jenna raised her elegant brows, and angled a shrewd look at Avon which seemed to demand what in space he had done to Blake. She'll never believe I'm genuine, Avon thought. She's already sure I've seduced him for some shadowy mercenary purpose. He narrowed his eyes at her.

“You had us worried there, Jenna,” said Blake with his gentlest humour, ending this mute exchange of hostilities. Everyone focused on Blake, seated there holding Avon with quiet conviction and frankly pleased to see his other two crewmembers.

“As Vila's explained, we were given no choice. I trusted you wouldn't starve in forty hours. Though I daresay Avon was libelling our collective honour after three.”

Archness was an improvement on cynicism, thought Avon, amused how Blake swayed Jenna with his mere manner. Blake was exhibiting their attachment for Jenna's sake too, he realised – lest she bring her leader back on board under false pretences.

“We've managed,” said Blake. “Pretty planet.”

Jenna unclipped a spare bracelet and gave it to Blake.

“Thank you, Jenna. Sounds like a sticky situation you were in. You handled it well.”

Under his praise, the hard-boiled smuggler fairly glowed.

Wrapped around his little finger, thought Avon. Aren't we all? Never mind, he's wrapped inextricably around mine too. And already he's manoeuvred Jenna into tolerating the fact. For, too proud of Blake's acknowledgement to mind his choice of lover, Jenna was handing him the other spare bracelet, graciously enough.

Only then did Blake stand, exuding satisfaction. “Liberator? Four to come up.” Over his lifted wrist his eyes found Avon's. Teleportation caught him in the act of winking.

###  
###


End file.
